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Keeping Kosher in Ghana Means Bringing Your Own Killing Knife

One day, as three friends and I were staying in Ghana, we thought some fresh goat meat might hit the spot. Luckily, a member of our party grew up on a back-to-the-land hippie farm that followed kosher practices, and had brought his special slaughtering...
Photo via Flickr user pinti1

On a beach in Ghana, ancient Hebrew tradition met African pastoral practices.

One winter, three friends and I were staying at a modest tourist resort in the West African nation, surrounded by palm trees and unspoiled sand. The restaurant served a variety of tasty fish-based meals straight from the Atlantic, but after a few days we thought some fresh goat meat might hit the spot.

One member of our party, Shiloh, grew up on a back-to-the-land hippie farm in Oregon that followed kosher practices, butchering their own sheep, goats, and bulls. He had brought his special slaughtering knife, or sakin, to Ghana in the event he got a chance to show off his craft. "I figured since I was going to Africa I might encounter a goat or two and perhaps have a chance to slaughter one the only way I knew how," he recalls.

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'It's pretty rare for everyday Jews in the modern world to kill their own meat.'

To be considered kosher, the sakin must be non-pointed, non-serrated, and kept impeccably sharp and defect-free. "My father had given me the knife when I was in my early twenties," Shiloh says. "Growing up I'd watched him slaughter many animals, and since I ate meat and raised animals myself, I figured I needed to learn how to do it."

In search of our quarry, we ventured less than a mile down the coast to Akwidaa, a small fishing village. In contrast to the pristine sand in front of the lodge, the beach there served as the village dump and toilet, strewn with garbage and human feces. After taking in the scenery, we took a canoe ride among the mangrove thickets in the Ezile river and walked out a peninsula to the overgrown ruins of Fort Dorothea, a colonial Prussian relic with little left but some old stone walls covered with shrubs and vines.

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The small billy goat enjoying a quiet moment on the beach. Photo by Meghann Coughlin.

"Hello! Where are you going?" the children yelled to us as we passed. We asked them where we could buy a goat.

All the goats were quite small in stature, presumably some variation on the Nigerian dwarf breed; after negotiating with a local herder, we settled on a price around $30. The vendor hog-tied our meal and handed it to us, hanging upside down from the rope. We decided to give the animal a little more dignity in its final hours and led it back up the beach on a leash instead.

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The operators at our resort weren't thrilled when we returned with a live goat and announced our intentions, but agreed to let us use their grill as long as we killed the animal out of sight and sound from the other guests. Back down the beach, we prepared for the deed while a few of the village children wandered up to watch. We must have made quite a scene. While do-it-yourself slaughter is the norm in most of Africa, a white man performing kosher ritual is not something you see every day around here.

"These days with the urbanization of most Jewish populations, kosher slaughter is highly centralized, with a few large companies using highly trained orthodox shochets to perform the ritual slaughter," Shiloh says. "As far as I know, it's pretty rare for everyday Jews in the modern world to kill their own meat."

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The fruits of our labor. Photo by Meghann Coughlin.

The kosher process is based on showing respect to the animal and not causing it undue pain, to the extent that that's possible when taking its life. Shiloh pulled the goat's head back, said a short blessing and slashed its throat with the sakin, severing both carotid arteries in a single slice. Blood spurted out profusely, and the animal twitched and bleated for some time, but the cutoff of blood to the brain rendered it effectively dead immediately, unable to feel pain.

'If it ever gets easy or fun to do, I'll probably have to give it up all together.'

After the goat bled out, we began the butchering process. We cut off the head, then started to remove the skin from the hooves on up, sliding our knives between the hide and the layer of fat that surrounds the carcass. I carefully removed the gastrointestinal tract undisturbed. You have to be especially careful not to puncture the intestines or the gallbladder, or risk leaking shit or bile that will ruin the meat. The testicles also take some care—I know one hippie cowboy in Oregon who squirted himself in the face with ram semen after incautiously slicing through the vas deferens. We managed to remove the rest of the organs unscathed, setting them aside with the heart, kidneys, and liver.

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There was one last component to the kosher ceremony—the animal must be healthy and free from defect, so we needed to make sure it wasn't infected with tuberculosis. To that end we removed the lungs, I put the trachea to my mouth and blew them up like a balloon. We inspected the inflated lungs, declared them free of tubercles, and went on with our work, quartering the meat to prepare it for the grill.

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The author blows up the lungs to check for tuberculosis. Photo by Meghann Coughlin.

Finally, we carried the meat and choice organs back to our resort, giving the head, skin, GI tract, lungs, and other discarded pieces to the children to take to their families. We lit the grill and tossed on the bounty, dividing the precious organs into four and arguing which was better: kidneys or testicles. Adding only salt, we gorged ourselves with the rich, flavorful flesh, naturally seasoned by the waste on the beach which surely made up a good part of the animal's diet.

Our stomachs heavy with goat meat, we wandered naked into the Atlantic Ocean and reflected on the life we took that evening. Though he believes in the process and has done it many times, Shiloh says it's always difficult to perform the act.

"Kosher killing can seem gory with all the blood, but if done smoothly and swiftly, I believe is a humane way of slaughter," he says. "I don't see it ever happening, but if it ever gets easy or fun to do, I'll probably have to give it up all together."